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FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794
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Posted on 10/09/2003 5:22:49 PM PDT by blam
Forget the namby-pamby girly stuff, here are ripping yarns for real chaps
By Nigel Reynolds, Arts Correspondent, in Frankfurt
(Filed: 10/10/2003)
The fightback started yesterday. Thirty years after Virago Books was born to champion writing by women, two (very grumpy) men announced that they are so fed up with feminism and political correctness that they are founding a company that will publish only male authors.
David Elliott and Brad Thompson said men were finding it increasingly hard to have books accepted by mainstream publishers. As a result there are too few "good reads" for men and boys.
Britain, they maintain, has become "so feminised and touchy feely" that rattling good male adventure yarns, books by men on men, and novels with boozing, smoking and sometimes debauched "real chaps" have been sacrificed on the altar of feminism.
Their ideas are very likely to cause some harsh words in the beanbag-strewn nurseries of Hampstead and Islington.
They say that boys need books that espouse old fashioned virtues such as honour and chivalry, and that Richmal Crompton's Just William books are a much better read for boys than Harry Potter because JK Rowling had the temerity to make Hermione the equal of Harry.
"We don't believe that it's acceptable that literature should attempt to turn young boys into young girls," Mr Thompson, a 51-year-old divorcee and father, said yesterday.
The pair, who run a small London independent publishing house, Elliott & Thompson - which does accept women authors - unveiled their plans at the Frankfurt Bookfair.
Their timing was spot-on. On Tuesday, the judges for this year's Booker Prize must pick a winner from a shortlist of six titles. Four of them - a record number - have been written by women.
The men-only series will be published by a new and macho-sounding imprint - Spitfire Books. Boys' books will come out under the blood-curdling name Young Spitfire.
Elliott and Thompson are not picking a quiet fight. "When Virago was launched, within a year they received an Arts Council grant," said Mr Elliott, 60, who is married but has no children. "We are going to apply for a grant as well."
Was he concerned that rejecting women authors could breach sex discrimination legislation? "I haven't looked into that, but I don't care. Virago never got done under the law."
He went on: "I am not against Virago. In fact, I have a lot of respect for them. It was a marketing thing really, and that is what we are doing now. They had their day. Now it's time for us to have ours to redress the balance because men are not getting a fair crack of the whip."
The rise of "chick lit" and an obsession by publishers and the media with promoting young women writers such as Rowling, Helen Fielding, Zadie Smith and Monica Ali, the bookies' favourite for the Booker Prize, demonstrated how unbalanced the picture had become.
Problems with boys reading less and later than girls, teenage male crime and the rising male suicide rate, were clear signs that boys needed stronger role models, said Mr Elliott. "I think we need more books demonstrating what I would call masculine principles and masculine emotions.
"I was brought up to believe in concepts of honour, decency, chivalry and stoicism, and a lot of that came from books. In some ways it was nonsense, of course, but the pendulum has swung too far the other way.
"Because of feminism and political correctness, what young men are being given to read is crap these days, with books by people like Tony Parsons [the author of Man and Boy]. It's all this new dad stuff, all namby-pamby, touchy-feely. Where are the great buccaneering, derring-do, true-life adventures and cowboy stories? Our criteria is that we want bloody good reads." Of Harry Potter, Elliott said: "It's typical of modern children's books in which there is a boy and a girl and the girl is as good as the boy. Just William [which features the unattractive Violet Elizabeth Bott as the only girl of substance] is a much better read for boys.
"Violet Elizabeth Bott was a whingeing, snivelling sneak who was always frightened. That is how I would like the girls to be."
Spitfire plans to publish up to 12 titles a year for men, mostly out-of-print books.
Mr Elliott said: "One terrible effect of this feminism is that there are an awful lot of wonderful writers like Neville Chute, AJ Cronin, Hugh Walpole and JB Priestley, whose books don't get reprinted."
Spitfire's first title, planned for February, will be Have A Nice Day, a laddish novel set in Hollywood about drunks, womanisers and pimps and written almost 30 years ago by the film critic Barry Norman.
At the same time the company will bring out Brief Lives by the journalist Alan Watkins. A collection of 29 short biographies of men such as Auberon Waugh, Roy Jenkins and Lord Beaverbrook written a quarter of a century ago, it is a neglected classic, said Mr Elliott.
Rather surprisingly, Mr Elliott was for 25 years a director of The Women's Press, a feminist publisher and a rival to Virago. He said: "Novels were turned down because they didn't agree with the feminist political agenda, and political correctness meant that infant schools were buying the complete fiction catalogue of The Women's Press.
"You do have to ask what on earth were four-year-olds going to do with titles like The Lesbian Mother's Handbook.
"Publishing is sexist. Brad and I are not terrible old sexists, but we are happy to get back to a healthy antagonism between the genders."
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FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794
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It is in the breaking news sidebar! |
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Whoa, they're taking on the publishing Lace Curtain - I with them luck in their attempt at penetration!
Sounds like a Help Wanted ad from the DNC.
No comment
I'll say. It's rough out there.
(ISBN 0451459393)
The U.S. had Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn though most nowadays think Bart Simpson is the original bad boy followed by Beavis and Butthead. The real and original U.S. bad boy is Peck's Bad Boy and His Father which is hilarious (and violent) and makes Bart look like a wimp. They sure liked their humour violent like the Three Stooges in those days.
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